Coup or Couture
by madame.alexandra
Summary: In light of the third Quarter Quell, she begins to see the nightmare of the Games, and Effie Trinket has to decide: victors or vanity, coup or couture. An extension/Effie centric take on a scene from 'Catching Fire' with HEAVY Hayffie undertones.


_**a/n:** so, this was originally me just wanting to add a tag to the movie/insert a tiny sliver of a scene where Effie acknowledges Haymitch as a victor. I am a shameful Hayffie shipper, and while I'd RATHER flesh it out in fanfiction, I think the movies ought to throw us a subtle bone or seven once in a while ;) and I was hoping she'd hug Haymitch during the scene where she hands out the gold trinkets (no pun, seriously). She didn't, so I supplied it, but it turned into a bit more; I think it's clear Effie is a conflicted woman, and hopefully that is represented here. _

* * *

The inexorable, silent fear that permeated the night before the third Quarter Quell was punctuated only by awkward words and last goodbyes; in the presence of the victors and their drunken mentor, Effie Trinket passed out golden emblems that solidified their bond as a team—at least, the simple little gold effects meant something in her painted, glittery, Capitol eyes, even if they meant nothing to these kids, and this man.

For Peeta: a thin, rectangular gold locket, to hang around his neck—for Haymitch: a woven, tough golden bracelet that he'd stash in a drawer or melt down and drink—Effie Trinket was beginning to see how silly they must think her, how silly they must think all of this, this pomp and circumstance that heralded the prospect of their deaths.

There was something about throwing victors back into the arena that ripped away the splendor and glitz of the Games and revealed the dark blood thirst and the incomparable violence, and Effie Trinket was frightened by the implications of her own feelings, now—she did not want to see her victors fight and die again; she did not want the Games to go on.

But Effie Trinket did not want to die a death like Seneca Crane's—so she smiled, and she passed out golden jewelry, and she glittered with her own gold and batted tearful, diamond-encrusted lashes—and she hugged each of her victors.

"We're a team," Effie Trinket said, the pit of her stomach churning, her mind a sticky, cotton-candy pink mess of ideas bigger than she'd been taught to comprehend, and fear darker than she'd ever imagined. "You're my victors."

The tentative smiles on their faces—Katniss and Peeta, District 12's infamous lovers—the way they thanked her graciously, it broke something fragile in her heart; she knew they thought her simple, and silly, and ignorant—and she was not sure she was strong enough to disavow them of that; Effie Trinket was a Capitol girl, and she was scared of what breaking the mold might mean.

_There was Seneca, and there were the Avoxes, and there were the rumors of what would happen to Cinna for his Mockingjay jest. _

She turned on her precariously high heels, and she fled the room—gracefully, and with properly straight shoulders, as Effie Trinket was trained to do—but she lingered just beyond the wall, and then she heard—Katniss:

"_Any last advice?"_

"_Stay Alive." _

Haymitch's dry, dreadful voice seemed to cement the hopelessness, the despair, the crushing injustice of the Games—and she tilted her coifed golden head back and stared at the ornate ceiling, blinking her heavy bejeweled lashes, wondering if this Quarter Quell was the Games during which Effie Trinket should ask what it meant to escort children to their deaths.

A shadow fell, and 'round the corner abruptly came Haymitch, cutting close to the edge, leaning on the wall—and so he stumbled into her, and swore, smelling of white liquor and sleeplessness and animosity—and Effie Trinket gave a soft squeak of surprise.

He blinked, straightened, and gave her a protracted, mocking bow, and then his eyes glimmered almost spitefully, and he reached out with rough fingers and caught a sparkling tear on the pad of his thumb—

"Why, Effie Trinket, you're crying for your victors," he rasped sardonically—and he lifted his thumb to his mouth and sucked on it, as if relishing the turmoil she felt.

She straightened up, preparing to flee—and then she changed her mind, and drew herself up to face him—the District 12 mentor she'd been stuck with, whose Game she'd watched as a child, whose descent into drunken madness she'd hastened, year after year, as they watched their victors die—and Effie Trinket thought, for the first time, about the weight that surely kept Haymitch down, and she wondered what sinister machination she'd been apart of all these years, in all her pastels and glitter and tulle.

Effie Trinket touched powdered, manicured hands to Haymitch's rough face, and her lips turned up, because she only knew how to smile—even in defeat, she smiled, and she put her arms around his neck.

"You're my victor too, Haymitch," she whispered, holding her breath against the stench of despondency that clung to him.

In a moment of absurd weakness—though truly, when was he not wallowing in the weakness, the ultimate vestige of the tributes who survived—Haymitch hugged Effie Trinket tightly, nauseated by her perfume, but seeking, for a moment, the memory of what it was like—to have a loved one hold him.

He yanked himself back, and gave her a hard look, and pulled from his pocket the woven gold bracelet, and touched it to Effie Trinket's golden hair.

"You want to be part of the team, Effie?" he growled, in hushed tones, for fear of being discovered—of being thwarted—and she knew, there was a depth to his question that would shake the foundations of Panem.

And with the world she had known, and the construct she had believed in, shattering around her like glass, Effie Trinket, a painted Capitol princess, had to chose—coup or couture.

* * *

_in the future, perhaps i'll slum around in Hayffie fanfic more often_  
_for now - this is my first Hunger Games fic!_

_-Alexandra_  
_story# 175_


End file.
